Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Deutsche Telekom is moving as quickly as possible to retire its legacy PSTN and go entirely IP, with the goal of having around 8 million IP-based lines across its footprint in Europe by the end of 2014 and the entire project completed in 2018. It's long term goal is an IP network that integrates mobile and fixed lines across all the European markets in which it operates.

In presentations at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Deutsche Telekom executives said this network transformation will also leverage network virtualization technology for service agility and reduced operating costs.

“The growing traffic demands by new mobile access technologies including machine-to-machine and real-time applications require a holistic network approach to improve capacity, efficiency and manage the best-possible customer experience,” said Claudia Nemat. "Innovation in networks is invisible, but customers feel the benefits. It's a revolution that is as radical as the transition from horse and carriage to car."

In mobile, Deutsche Telekom has now launched LTE in almost all of its markets. By 2016, Deutsche Telekom will be able to provide LTE to its customers at every second base station across Europe.

“We don’t only have the expansion of network coverage in mind; we also want to keep increasing the speed of connections. That’s why we’re carrying out tests in Germany, among other places, to see how we can provide customers with data as fast as possible through LTE Advanced,” said Claudia Nemat. “Today I can say that we have reached a point in the LTE rollout in Germany where our customers can use LTE in over 150 cities with speeds up to 150 Mbps,” added Niek Jan van Damme. 300 Mbps will be the next milestone. In a test last week in the German city of Alzey Deutsche Telekom reached even speeds of up to 580 Mbps using LTE-A 4x4 MIMO.

Deutsche Telekom also presented a hybrid router that combines fixed network, LTE and WiFi technologies so as to bundle, concentrate and distribute bandwidth in consumer homes. This project is expected to launch by the end of 2014.